Clean Food, Chemical Free Food

People often ask me, “Isn’t it more expensive to eat the way you eat….organic, local, fresh, nutrient dense food?”

My answer is that I don’t even consider it as an option to eat any other way because it is such a top priority for me to nourish myself with healthy, nutrient dense food.

I also tell them that because I eat such high quality, life giving food, I am not subject to all the sicknesses that come from eating the SAD (Standard American Diet), so I never go to the doctor (nor do I buy expensive drugs or over the counter medications). In fact, except for having a doctor help put my knee back together after it was crushed in a car accident several years ago, I have not been to a doctor for an illness since I was a teenager. I rarely get sick and even if I did, I would apply all the natural remedies I have up my sleeve rather than go to a doctor (who will likely give me antibiotics which would probably wipe out all my beneficial gut flora (which I have taken great lengths to build over time)).

One of the other reasons why it is my priority to eat clean food is because non-clean food (conventional, industrially produced food for the masses) is generally laden with chemical pesticides. Beyondpesticides is an amazing resource to explain the health consequences of pesticides and how they literally lead to disease. It explains which pesticides cause which disease. The text below is an excerpt from the website:

Yes, maybe eating organic, nutrient dense food is more expensive initially, but if you truly added up all the hidden costs of producing food in such a disrespectful way as our modern food industrial complex is doing, it is actually much more expensive to eat the “SAD” diet. Pesticides pollute our water which then poison our fish and all the smaller critters down the food chain.

They also kill all the good bacteria in the soil which actually makes our food more nutritious if we took the time to nourish it instead of killing it. And it leaves us with more poisons in our environment which are not only having serious consequences on the bee population, but also on our human population. When we eat this food, we are also eating the poisons with which they were grown. I don’t know about you, but this just does not seem like the most intelligent idea.

If you are not yet convinced, check out the latest article by The Huffington Post (posted 06/7/11):

WASHINGTON — Industry regulators have known for years that Roundup, the world’s best-selling herbicide produced by U.S. company Monsanto, causes birth defects, according to a new report released Tuesday.

The report, “Roundup and birth defects: Is the public being kept in the dark?” found regulators knew as long ago as 1980 that glyphosate, the chemical on which Roundup is based, can cause birth defects in laboratory animals.

But despite such warnings, and although the European Commission has known that glyphosate causes malformations since at least 2002, the information was not made public.

Instead regulators misled the public about glyphosate’s safety, according to the report, and as recently as last year, the German Federal Office for Consumer Protection and Food Safety, the German government body dealing with the glyphosate review, told the European Commission that there was no evidence glyphosate causes birth defects.

The report comes months after researchers found that genetically-modified crops used in conjunction Roundup contain a pathogen that may cause animal miscarriages. After observing the newly discovered organism back in February, Don Huber, a emeritus professor at Purdue University, wrote an open letter to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack requesting a moratorium on deregulating crops genetically altered to be immune to Roundup, which are commonly called Roundup Ready crops.

In the letter, Huber also commented on the herbicide itself, saying: “It is well-documented that glyphosate promotes soil pathogens and is already implicated with the increase of more than 40 plant diseases; it dismantles plant defenses by chelating vital nutrients; and it reduces the bioavailability of nutrients in feed, which in turn can cause animal disorders.”

Although glyphosate was originally due to be reviewed in 2012, the Commission decided late last year not to bring the review forward, instead delaying it until 2015. The chemical will not be reviewed under more stringent, up-to-date standards until 2030.